


We're All Mad Here

by grumblesandmumbles



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: 1960s, Advertising, Alternate Universe - 1960s, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mad Men AU, fake identity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 21:49:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7285981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumblesandmumbles/pseuds/grumblesandmumbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mickey Milkovich is one of the biggest names in advertising... and he's damn good at it. He's worked with some of the biggest clients out there, and they all love him and his work. Hell, he's been advertising himself for years, but it's all been lies. </p>
<p>When he meets a fiery redhead, the truth threatens to come out and unravel everything he's worked so hard for. Will Mickey be able to maintain his lies and still find a way to live his truth?</p>
<p>Loosely based on/inspired by Mad Men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We're All Mad Here

PROLOGUE – 1950’S IN THE AMERICAN HEARTLAND

 

Danny O'Halloran didn't have an easy childhood. The result of an accidental pregnancy between a pimp and his prostitute, Danny had never known love from the man who was his father. Hell, he barely knew his father at all. The man, Terry, was neglectful at best and abusive at worst. He never called his son by name, only addressing him as "the bastard," and he refused to put his name on the birth certificate, so Danny had his mother Mimi's last name.

_"The luck of the Irish," she had told him. "It didn't do much for me, but maybe it can be different for you."_

He had no family. There were no brothers and sisters, no aunts and uncles and cousins. He had his mother and the other women she worked with in the brothel where he was raised. His favorite had always been Lidiya, one of the older women there. She was a Soviet, a rarity for the Midwest in those days. She had treated him as her own, buying him presents for Christmas when his mother wasn't able and cooking for him. She had taught him some Russian for fun in her spare time, though that was a secret only between the two of them. With US and Soviet relations at an all-time low, they couldn’t run the risk that someone misunderstand their hobby for something more treacherous. Most of all, above everything else, she paid attention to him.

His mother was a gentle soul, one who wanted better for her only child, but who neglected him in her own right and exposed him to a life he never wished to know. When he had gotten old enough to understand what it was that she was doing to make her livelihood, he tried to quit school to work for them. They had fought viciously, Danny wanting to protect her dignity, but she would have none of it. When he was only 15, Terry died in a bar room brawl. A year later, his mother was dead from a mystery ailment. Before she had died, he had sat with her in her room and she had used what energy she had left to sing to him. She had sounded so beautiful, and on lonely nights he imagined her voice, grateful that it was their last memory together.

 

_Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling_

_From glen to glen, and down the mountain side._

_The summer's gone, and all the roses falling,_

_'Tis you, 'Tis you must go and I must bide._

_But come ye back when summer's in the meadow,_

_Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow,_

_'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow,—_

_Oh, Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you so!_

_But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,_

_If I am dead, as dead I well may be,_

_Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying,_

_And kneel and say an Ave there for me._

_And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,_

_And all my grave shall warmer, sweeter be,_

_For you shall bend and tell me that you love me,_

_And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me!_

_(Oh Danny Boy, Oh Danny boy, I love you so.)_

 

Danny was 16 and alone in the world. He was given the last of his mother's possessions – $100 and some old family photos of people he didn't know, and was told that he would need to leave the brothel by the end of that week, leave the only home he had ever known. Lidiya was beside herself. As Danny went to leave on his last day, she chased him down the driveway. She pushed some bills into his hand, demanding he take the money when he tried to give it back to her.

"Your mother wanted better for you. I want better for you. You deserve bigger than this. You go to a big city and you make something of yourself, do you hear me?"

He had nodded, shoving the crumpled bills into his pocket without looking at them. She had grabbed his face, repeating the nickname only she used for him. She kissed his cheeks, tears running down her own.

"Ya tebya lyublyu. Ya tebya lyublyu."

He hugged her there at the foot of the driveway. "Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu."

He never saw her again, but he made sure she was always a part of his life. When he finally made it to New York and rented his first apartment, he signed his new identity on the lease, using her pet nickname for him and her last name:

_Mickey Milkovich_

Starting a new life in a big city was really for the best, for a number of reasons. Besides affording him the chance to have a new life, free from the stigma of his upbringing, it also allowed him to hide his biggest secret. He was gay. He had tried the traditional route, had married a woman and had a child with her, but for obvious reasons, their marriage failed. His ex-wife, Svetlana, knew the truth. But she had secrets of her own, and despite the fact that they couldn't keep up the lie between them, she was committed to taking his secrets with her to the grave. She understood, and she didn’t really care what he did or what happened to him once they divorced. She remarried quickly, moved to the suburbs, and Mickey supported their son, Yevgeny. Despite the frosty relations between the US and the Soviets, they didn't Americanize their son's name. Mickey, of course, didn't tell his wife that it reminded him of another important Soviet woman who had been a part of his life.

He made a life for himself in New York. He was known in his office as a lothario, always attending events and functions with a new woman on his arm, but they never lasted. The clients loved it; they looked at him as a man’s man. Most assumed it was just because he played the field and left them in his wake. The truth is, he didn’t sleep with them. In the early days after his divorce, he tried to convince himself that he wasn’t gay, but rather he just wasn’t attracted to his wife. But after multiple failed attempts to be with other women, and more than a few successful drunken trysts with men, he knew the truth about himself. But knowing his truth and living it were two different things, and with the exception of an occasional dalliance when his need got to be unmanageable, he led a very celibate life.

Mickey got his foot in the door of the advertising world, and he kicked it down. That’s where he channeled his focus and his energy. He quickly set about revamping the world of creative advertising, and he was the youngest person to ever become a Creative Director in New York, possibly anywhere. It was unheard of. But Mickey was that good, and he had no plans of allowing anyone to stop him on his way to the top.

But then, life doesn’t always go according to plan.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [Tumblr!](http://grumblesandmumbles.tumblr.com)


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